Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Tuesday April 20, 2010 @08:48AM
from the no-way-he's-biased dept.

angry tapir writes "According to BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker, the Internet industry has to regulate itself by responding to consumer demands in the wake of the recent US federal court ruling that the Federal Communications Commission didn't have authority to enforce its net neutrality rules."

Unfortunately, we are stuck with the exact same situation you describe...we just moved into a new apartment building, and everything is almost perfect...except Internet. We have a choice between Comcast Cable, or the local DSL provider. Since my fiancee is a 3rd grade teacher and does a TON of work from home, and I do a lot of online gaming, a DSL line just wouldn't cut it...so, we're stuck with Comcast.

The United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association is the self-regulating body for non-powered human flight AKA ultralights. FAA regulations part 103 basically says "Do whatever the heck you want, between dawn and dusk, just stay the heck out of the way of regular air traffic." No inspections, no required certifications, no reporting requirements, no helmet requirements, etc.

Self-regulation works in this case because because pilots want to keep the government out of their way, so they voluntarily make-up sensible rules and comply with them. Technically, you don't HAVE to join the USPHA to fly a hang glider, and you don't HAVE to follow their rules. But pilots voluntarily get the certifications, voluntarily wear helmets, voluntarily report accidents, etc. We would rather make our own rules and follow them than have the government do it.

Unfortunately, this model doesn't work for most anything else. Rarely is a for-profit company motivated by a need to do things right.

Bittorrent is ideal solution for IP broadcasting (one or few sources to massively many destinations).

At least 90% of bit torrent traffic is either downloading p0rn or people pirating games, movies, and music.

It is consistent with my remark. Those are all equivalents of "pirate broadcasting stations" of the past. But the content delivery technology behind it is useful for legitimate uses. Not utilizing it results in clogged Intertubes.

Yes, they're experiments, but the GP is still somewhat accurate. Yes, electricity isn't "stored" by electric companies, but they can reduce how much is generated. Lots of highly paid engineers earn their living designing highly complicated systems to determine where to strike that balance. The municipal power company where I live is an old-school oil burning plant. No, they don't store up electricity once it's been generated, but they can do things like burning less oil during periods of lower consumption while increasing oil burning to meet up with demand. This principle admittedly doesn't hold up with things like wind, solar, or nuclear power, but it does here for the intent of my point.

There's no "conserving" bandwidth by leaving it in some sort of unprocessed form. Either bits are going over a wire, or they aren't. To my admittedly limited knowledge, there's no analogous means of "leaving bandwidth in oil form until it's needed", and I think THAT's more what the GP was getting at.

yes because everyone on slashdot never broke the law ONCE. We are all corrupt. Just at different levels of the scale.

Breaking the law != corrupt.

Corrupt is working against the people's best interests for some benefit of some 3rd party who is your benefactor. On that level I can safely state that most of Slashdot is not corrupt, because most of us are poor, unwashed, plebes whose only true power is choosing between Coke and Pepsi.

Most of/. might possibly be corrupt if somehow power fell into our laps, but lacking power there is no real opportunity to be corrupt.